1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computing systems, and more particularly to systems for managing resources for maintenance tasks in computing systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data deduplication is an emerging field in storage systems in recent years. The core idea a data deduplication is storing single instances of duplicated data. A challenge to deduplication is to efficiently locate duplicated data patterns in typically large repositories, and to store those data patterns in an efficient deduplicated storage form.
Deduplicated data entities might become obsolete or fragmented over time. This means that the deduplicated storage systems might need to perform maintenance tasks (e.g., delete tasks or “defragment” tasks, etc.) on the deduplicated data entries or rearrange the physical storage space on which the deduplicated data entries reside.
Typically, the various maintenance tasks responsible for maintaining the deduplicated data entries are performed by a plurality of controllers. Specifically, a different controller manages each maintenance task and each controller is responsible for controlling the rate at which its maintenance task is performed. For example, a delete task that deletes deduplicated data entries at a nominal rate is managed by a first controller, while a defragment task that defragments deduplicated data entries at a physical rate is managed by a second controller. Since current computing systems utilize multiple controllers, these computing systems do not utilize system resources as efficiently as they otherwise could use system resources.